


Fire in the Garden of Paradise

by CaptainArlert



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fahrenheit 451, M/M, but i've essentially just made it my own style of pretentious lmao, i thought i might try playing with his literary style, it's essentially a fahrenheit 451 AU, listen i love ray bradbury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 12:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainArlert/pseuds/CaptainArlert
Summary: "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there" - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.Eren is a book-burning Fireman.Armin is a librarian.





	Fire in the Garden of Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> It was a pleasure to burn.

He breathes in lighter fluid and breathes out smoke.

Ash coats his skin, oil is his sweat, it sticks to his brow and soaks his body with heat.

He’s smiling, of course.

It crinkles the bottom half of his face, dry and cracked and as lifeless as the empty desert outside of the walls.

There’s no life anywhere but here.

Those who cannot adapt, must be dealt with.

They’re weakening the gene pool.

Contaminating the strength of the last remaining human population.

Unacceptable.

There will be no weakness.

Not in body, not in heart, and most importantly, not in mind.

Eren breathes fire, but his heart beats cold.

Tonight is a special night.

It’s Monty’s birthday.

They were supposed to go together, but Eren had assured the older man that he could handle this one on his own.

His wife was waiting.

His tired-eyed children.

They have a cake waiting.

A cake decked in candles, with fire.

Another fire waits for him.

Eren would normally look forward to the cleansing heat, the purging satisfaction accompanied with absolute destruction, but tonight he just wants to curl up in his bed.

Wipe the smile off his face in the shower.

Retreat to his blankets, where he can bury himself in softness and breathe slowly, breathe air instead of matches, oxygen rather than plumes.

It’s a small establishment.

It doesn’t look deadly.

But of course, it is, Eren knows as he hops off of his motorcycle, his hard black boots soft against the sandy dirt.

There’s nothing more deadly than thoughts, words.

Nothing except fire, perhaps.

Lucky he has one of these weapons on his side.

The one that trumps all, that beats paper, scissors, and rock.

He wonders if the inhabitant will fight.

He hopes not.

He doesn’t like to fight.

It’s exhausting.

His lungs are weak from years of inhaling smoke and expelling heat.

They must be as black and shriveled as the coal they fed to the industrial engines at the nearby mining plants.

Pull them free and watch them dissolve into dust.

No use to anyone.

He coughs just thinking about it.

Raises his hand, which feels perpetually black, always covered in soot and grime, even after he showers and scrubs his skin raw.

“Can’t breathe, Eren,” his mother had said in her dying breath. “It hurts so much. Make it stop.”

What kind of son lets his mother suffer like that?

A callous one.

An ungrateful one.

He knocks on the door, his blackened knuckles as hard as his face, his cheeks raw instead of rosy, black instead of pink.

No one responds for a long time.

Eren stands there, frozen, a smile cutting into his cheeks.

He wants to go home.

He wants to wash the smile off.

“Fireman here. Open up. Or I’ll knock the door down.”

He waits.

A lock is unlocked.

The door is open.

Eren blinks.

A young man, or perhaps a boy, stands before him.

His face is clean.

His hair is blond.

His eyes are blue.

They meet Eren’s blackened eyes without hesitation.

Eren blinks, wondering if it’s possible to pollute such eyes with blackness.

With soot and smoke and ash.

With the murky greyness of the world.

But those eyes blink and the moment is gone.

He’s still smiling.

The young man is not.

“What do you want, Fireman?” the man, or the boy, asks.

“Get out of the house. You’re coming with me afterwards,” Eren says roughly.

There’s no need to explain.

Firemen do not make house calls.

When they come, you know what they’ve come for.

And the young man knows exactly why he’s here.

He tilts his head slightly.

Eren feels uneasy.

“Come in,” the man says.

The man is staring at him.

Not with fear.

Just staring at him.

A frown on his face.

Eren wants to smack it, for some reason.

The impulse confuses him.

He’s never wanted to hit anyone.

“No,” he says slowly. “No, that is not necessary.”

But the man isn’t listening to him. He’s not even waiting for him to finish his sentence.

He turns and leaves, letting the door swing shut behind him, as though Eren isn’t there.

As though regardless of what he said, he was planning on going back inside.

It is baffling.

Eren is baffled.

He hesitates.

His flamethrower on his shoulder, his fuel on his back.

But what can he do?

Nothing.

He’s never experienced anything like this before.

He pushes on the door and finds it’s open.

He enters the house.

He hasn’t entered a house in years.

You burn the place from the outside. Never go inside, not unless a dissident is being difficult and hiding inside of it.

He’s never been the one sent in for dissidents anyway.

It’s usually Reiner.

Bertholdt, maybe.

Jean, a woman screaming slurs and insults over his shoulder.

Never him.

He waits at the fire truck.

He watches the dissidents, some dignified, some screaming, all stony-eyed by the end.

All of their eyes brimming with lights, magnificent embers.

An endless pyre.

He sees them when he sleeps.

Eyes.

Fire.

Darkness like ash.

Rinse and repeat.

Bathe in soot.

Eren blinks the blackness out of his eyes and looks around.

“Don’t sit down anywhere, I want to remember this place as spotless,” the man says idly.

Eren looks around with mild disbelief.

Spotless?

He’s never seen a place so opposed to the very notion.

If the man possesses furniture, he wouldn’t know it.

Every inch of space is covered in paper.

Diagrams of birds and insects and fish.

The bones of cats and dogs and birds held up in glass display cases.

A tank with a massive toad in it. Some small jars with different colored algae. A fish swimming in a round bowl on the kitchen counter surrounded by papers with hastily  
scribbled red pen all over them.

An open plastic box full of what sounds like crickets.

He peers curiously into it and sees that he is correct.

“Tea?” the man asks calmly.

He’s procured a teapot out of midair, or at least he must’ve, because Eren cannot see any conceivable area in his house empty enough to contain one.

Eren shakes his head mutely.

The man shrugs.

Eren feels like he should be more aggressive, like Reiner.

He should run forward, grab the man by the shoulders, and drag him out.

He should light the place on fire and let all of his strange animals, odd artifacts, and useless papers go up in flames.

But he holds himself back, for some reason.

The man puts the teapot on the burner.

“Shall we, then?”

Eren squints at him in confusion.

“The contraband,” the man says sweetly.

Eren nods, understanding.

He lets the man lead him strategically through his house, around sharp edges, over glass bowls full of specimen, passed jars with wide dead eyes floating inside of them.  
  
Up.  
  
Up.  
  
Into the attic.  
  
The man stomps up creaking ladder stairs, Eren in tow.

He pulls a metal chain hanging from a light bulb.

It casts a dim glow on a stool, a cupboard.

But Eren isn’t looking at either thing.

He can only stare in disbelief at the piles, no, mountains of books stacked before him.

Books of all colors, shapes, sizes, textures, bindings. Paperbacks, hardcovers, some just paper with string and metal rings. Some have designs on their edges, scales, webs, sunsets, stellar bodies, lapping waves. Others have animals, trees, buildings on their covers. Some are face down, revealing their long and impressive summaries on their backs. Others are face up, gleaming in the low light, silver and red and black lettering adorning their covers.

The attic is so filled with books that two entire walls are stacked right to the ceiling.

The man and Eren can only walk a few steps before they reach the first row of books.

“By the look on your face, I can assume I have the honor of storing the most contraband you’ve ever seen?” the man asks, his voice amused.

Eren nods slightly, only half hearing him.

“Oscar Wilde,” the man says, nodding at the book he’s staring at. “Cormac McCarthy. William Faulkner. Joseph Heller. Poe. Alighieri. Salinger. Albee. Hemingway. Alcott. Orwell. Bradbury.”

He points to each one.

“There are a few duplicates, but most of them are the last copies left alive. When you burn them, they’ll be gone forever.”

Eren says nothing.

The books are doing strange things to his ears.

He could almost swear they’re whispering strange things to him.

He absentmindedly reaches out for one that’s been particularly vocal.

But the man catches his hand before he can even come close.

“You’re not here to listen to them,” he says sternly. “You’re here to destroy them, aren’t you? Their words aren’t meant for your ears.”

But he hesitates a little, seeming to have a small mental battle as his eyes dart from Eren’s still outstretched hand to a bright blue book with a golden spine.

“Although I suppose...it wouldn’t hurt to hold one, maybe.”

He doesn’t let go of Eren’s hand, but he does reach for the book, grasp it firmly, and deposit it in Eren’s dirty palm.

Eren holds it tightly, curious despite himself.

It feels so firm.

Clean.

The pages are so perfectly aligned, so perfectly unbent.

He flips them with his thumb, feeling slightly intrigued, maybe a little thrilled, by the cool flapping noise, the soft slap of pages turning.

He almost glances inside of it.

Almost sees the words.

Almost reads them.

But then the very thought inspires an instinctual, almost primal disgust within him.

He flings it out of his hand like it’s rotten, like it’s covered in slime or blood.

Immediately, the man slaps him in the face.

Eren, stunned, but also not prone to reactionary violence, only stares straight forward.

His cheek stinging.

He looks down at the man, not sure if he’s impressed or still just astounded that such a small man could pack that kind of hit.

The man looks wary, like he’s not sure of what Eren’s reaction would be, but not regretful.

He’s glaring at him defiantly, challengingly, actually.

“Destroy them if you must, but respect them,” he says fiercely.

Respect an inanimate object.

If Eren didn’t think this odd little man was crazy before, he does now.

This strange little blond, with his animals and insects and papers filled with ideas and notes.

Eren huffs and turns his back on the sight.

But as he leaves the room, as the man follows him, leaning forward to pull the light out, Eren gets one last look at the cramped little room full of contraband.

It twinkles innocently at him.

It lets out a low whistle.

The colors of all of the covers seem to wink at him.

Come in, they say.

But the man closes the trapdoor on them.  
  
And Eren looks away, the spell broken.

He is tired.

The world is too heavy.

The ash on his skin weighs his shoulders down.

“Get out of this house at once,” Eren tries.

The man ignores him.

He gets his tea.

A few minutes later, he’s pouring himself a cup, smacking his lips, and sitting down on a paper covered stool.

“Bought the house in 2084,” he says conversationally. Eren, not sitting down, shuffles uncomfortably as the nozzle of his flamethrower jabs one of the jars on a shelf. “A bit run down. Been in disuse. Very isolated, you see. Most people prefer to be around lots of people, lots of entertainment, lots of lights and noise.”

“Not you,” Eren says simply.

“No, not me,” the man says. “I needed my space. Needed a place to keep my research. My specimens. And I just don’t like to be around people all of the time.”

“And you needed a place far enough away from the federal government’s reach to store contraband,” Eren says.

The man smiles.

“That too.”

“But why?” Eren asks.

He’s never asked them that before.

Never even thought to.

The job was so easy. The questions were unnecessary. They complicated what need not be understood.

But for some reason, he can’t help but ask.

The man pauses, seeming taken aback that a Fireman would ask such a thing.

“Ah...you wouldn’t understand. Most people wouldn’t. Most people don’t, in fact. Books just...don’t call out to everyone. They...hm. They call out to me. They say, Armin, we have souls. We have the spirit of our authors. We contain the essence of human introspection, the depths of the human heart etched in ink on our paper skin. Hold us. Look into us. Absorb us. Don’t let us fade.”

The man, Armin, he smiles dreamily, his eyes closed, his tea cup perfectly steady in his hands.

Eren stares at him.

“You’re mental.”

“Hm, seems that way,” Armin grins around his tea cup. “I suppose you’ve never talked to your flamethrower over there.”

Eren stares stonily back.

“I have a book called, ‘How to Legally Obtain a Sense of Humor’ down there, maybe you should save that one for yourself,” Armin murmurs.

“It’s time,” Eren says sharply.

“Ah. Very well,” Armin sighs, putting his tea cup gently and carefully down onto what is presumably some kind of table. “Well. I don’t suppose we have time to take all of my creatures out?”

“It wouldn’t matter,” Eren says. “You’re going to prison. They’ll die without you.”

“Hm. A shame. My poor dears,” Armin blows them kisses.

Eren scowls.

“Please follow me outside.”

* * *

  
He is surprised how calm Armin is.

  
They’re normally not calm.

  
They’re normally screaming.

Moaning. 

Begging. 

But Armin seems vaguely amused by him. 

He watches him pour gasoline on his home of fourteen years as though watching him lay bricks. 

He whistles to himself as Eren breaks windows, as he throws his papers out onto the ground as kindling. 

And when Eren is done and he begins to fiddle with his flamethrower, he is, smiling. 

It makes Eren uneasy.

Puts him on the edge. 

He adjusts the nozzle. 

“Fireman.” 

Eren, hesitating, looks over at Armin.

Before he even registers what’s happening, the flamethrower is on the ground. 

Armin had yanked it out of his hands. 

He’s now running to the front door, wrestling it open, and slamming it shut behind himself. 

Eren hears the door lock.

  
He rushes up to it, slamming his entire body against it.

  
But it holds firm.

  
He reaches through the broken window, but can’t get to the lock.

  
And Armin is shoving his arm away anyway.

  
“Light it up,” he says cheerfully.

  
Eren, shocked out of some of his stupefaction, enough to feel annoyed, glares at him.

  
“Get out.”

  
“They’re going to burn,” Armin says simply. “I will too.”

  
Eren glowers through the broken window.

  
“Get out.”

 

“I won’t,” the blond says. “I belong in this house. I belong to these books. If they burn, I burn.”

  
“That is suicide,” Eren snaps.

  
“It is. A painful one. I only wish I could’ve saved my animals,” Armin sighs.

  
“You’re going to kill yourself for them? For scraps of paper with symbols on them?”

  
“Men have died for less. They have died for principle. For ideas. For the freedom to have ideas. Humankind is a foolish race, and I am no exception. And neither are you, if you don’t allow me this,” Armin says.

  
“I can call in backup,” Eren says. “We will forcibly remove you.”

  
“I’d burn myself and my books before they got here,” Armin says patiently, slowly, as though speaking to a child. “Just do your job, Fireman. Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to go home? Why are you arguing with a madman who puts value in paper and ink? Who puts the good of lifeless objects before his own? The world is better off without people like me. If I had any sense to share with the next generation, I’d be out there, with you. But I don’t. So light my home ablaze, Fireman. Burning books, burning flesh, burning the human soul, all of these things are alike.”

  
“If you think you can save your books by putting your own life on the line, you are mistaken,” Eren says slowly. “The books will burn. So will this house. Regardless of whether you’re in it or not.”

  
“I know very well that your job is to… clean house, so to speak. I know when I’m beaten. But I’m not broken. Not yet. It’s your job to light contraband on fire, isn’t it? Well this is contraband,” the man says, pointing to his head. “This is illegal, Fireman. Light it up.”

  
His words sound as though he’s cocky, as though he doesn’t believe Eren would do it.

 

Yet his eyes are solemn.

  
His mouth is smiling, but thinly, without malice or teasing.

  
He knows Eren will do it.

  
He accepts it.

  
He is not bluffing or testing him.

  
He truly intends…

  
Eren isn’t sure what to think.

  
He’s mad.

  
Dangerous.

  
He must not be allowed to spread his dangerous ideas.

 

He must die, then, if he’s not willing to repent. To accept his punishment.

  
But still, for some reason, he hesitates.

  
His mother’s face flashes before his eyes, and he hesitates like he hadn’t since his very first night on the job, when a young woman had burst into tears and seized him by the pants and pleaded for leniency.

 

But he’s older now.

  
Harder.

  
His face is a mask of ash, his skin a layer of soot.

  
He stares at Armin inside of the house.

  
And he raises his weapon.

  
He’s accustomed to the roar of orange flames.

  
The bright, yellow-white glow of their trail, splitting the air with heat.

  
They do not startle him as they rain down on the house like a pack of wolves, howling and barking as they sink their sharp teeth into the walls and roof, as they rip apart the building like frightened, frozen prey.

  
He expects Armin to run out.

  
To be terrified.

  
To have bluffed and been called on it.

  
But the door is closed.

  
There isn’t a sound.

  
Armin isn’t screaming.

  
He’s not running in a panic.

  
Eren peeks through the window and is shocked to see him standing.

  
Just standing. 

Staring at his toad. 

Then looking at his papers, orange from the heat, and soon to be nothing but ash. 

And as flames engulf the house, and smoke curls like a vulture over its dying victim, Eren feels like he’s the one burning.

  
His skin is itching.

  
It’s hot, hotter than it’s ever been before, as though he were right beside him.

  
His head is buzzing, his heart beating so loud and hard that it threatens to explode and crack his ribs. The very foundation of his body is cracking like the bones of the house, trembling under the weight of the destruction wrought by oil and sparks.

  
He can’t believe this.

  
This perfectly intelligent, cordial, sane man is going to wait?

  
Going to sit and burn?

And for what?

For...nothing?

For something.

Something you just don’t understand.

  
He’s smarter than you, isn’t he?

  
You could tell.

Maybe...he knows something you don’t.

  
“He’s crazy,” Eren whispers to himself. “He’s crazy.”

  
He tells himself that.

  
He might even believe it.

  
But for the first time in his life, he’s not sure.

  
This man makes him…

  
Uneasy.

  
Uncomfortable. 

Perturbed. 

All of these things, in ways he’s never felt before. 

He’s just another one of the crazy ones. Hiding contraband. Doing illegal things just for the hell of it. Ruining the order of the world, the stability, with evil ideas. His death will only ensure the life of humanity’s future.

  
He’d expected to hear screams.

  
No, he actually hadn’t expected the man to go so far.

To actually stay and die. 

He looked so slender and weak…

He was much stronger than he looked. Much more than he appeared. 

Could there be even more to him than Eren had...could there be more to those books…?

“Eren, it hurts so much.”

His fists clench involuntarily. 

His mouth droops and he feels a strain in his mask. 

What if Armin knew…?

What if he could explain…

  
If he could tell him…?

  
Eren is struck with a sudden, blinding panic he hasn’t felt since that brief second after his mother had died.

  
In that moment, he’d been like a child again, afraid of dark corners of rooms and the strange men in white with cold needles and knives waiting to hurt him at his weakest.

  
He’d felt that ugly sick feeling in his gut, a mixture of fear, sadness, and guilt.

  
It had gone in a flash, sealed securely behind his mask. Never to be felt again.

  
Until now.

  
But it’s more powerful than it was back then. 

And it’s not going away. 

He knows. 

Eren breaks. 

The mask doesn’t slip off; it shatters. 

He runs towards the house. 

And using all of his strength, he kicks through the weakened wooden door.

It’s dangerous to be in here. 

He’s never the one in here. 

But he doesn’t allow himself to pause. 

It is vital that he find Armin. 

It is vital that Armin tell him if it was ok...if it was the right thing to do…

Eren calls his name. 

But there is no answer. 

Eren looks around, oddly hypnotized by the dying animals, the fish boiling in their tanks, the curled papers going up in flames, the furniture burning slower, but inevitably seeking the same fate. 

The disintegration of a man’s life’s work.

  
And his life.

  
He has the answers.

Find him.

  
His eyes are burning.

He looks. 

And sees a door he hadn’t see before, a metal door that had been covered by a rug that’s been burned away. 

He touches it, feeling its heat, even through his gloves, and yanks it open. 

And he finally sees him. 

His bright blond hair splayed out underneath him like a halo on smooth gray stone. 

A cellar. 

He’d had a cellar he’d been hiding. 

And a dozen or so books piled up in the shadowy corners. 

Originals, perhaps, the last of their kind. 

Eren ignores them. 

Armin is unconscious. 

The cellar might be safer than any other area of the house, but smoke had still seeped in. 

The air is growing thin. 

Eren lifts him up over his shoulder. 

He knows so many things. 

He knows. 

Do not let him die. 

* * *

  
Armin would’ve accepted his death down in the cellar.

  
He had been prepared to die, of course.

  
He knew air was limited.

He also knew there was a possibility his house would collapse over the door, leaving him trapped down there forever.  
Or that the cellar itself might collapse.

  
Or the fireman would find the cellar and burn his last copies.

But that’s alright. 

He’d known, ever since he was a child, that other people were not like him. 

They could not hear the words. The pages. The ink and paper. 

They couldn’t even hear each other.

Only their own voices. 

They read when they were told, but did not understand what they were told. 

He could not bear to be around such people. 

He chose to study alone, to read about subjects others did not care about, zoology, marine biology, oceanography. 

He worked for the government for some time. 

Cut the ocean he loved into tiny bits for them to digest and regurgitate onto battle plans and military engagements. 

But his work for them was painful. 

And when his grandfather died and he, the last surviving heir of the Arlert family, inherited all of his assets.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to move out to the country. 

To buy supplies. Capture specimens. Live quietly. 

Still work for the military, but not shoulder-to-shoulder.

Keep the devil at arm’s length. 

He was content enough with the arrangement. 

Well. 

Until he met Marco Bodt. 

A librarian, so he called himself. 

A man who worked for the military (as did most people these days). 

Officially a cartographer, but unofficially a book hoarder.

He’d carefully and painstakingly earned Armin’s trust over the course of four years.

And then he’d slipped him a book. 

A thin book. 

So thin it hid easily among the thick papers of their correspondence files, their official reports and legal documents regarding top secret military engagements. 

Armin, curious, had slipped it between his fingers several times, feeling its smooth skin, its sharp, satisfying edges. 

And when he’d opened its pages, conscious of the fact that this was a book, a novel purely composed of blasphemous ideas, he knew instantly, from the first word, the first lovely configuration of meaningless, meaningful letters into a fantastic sentence, that he could never go back. 

The papers he had written and read paled in comparison to this.

  
Facts were nice. They were clinical, detached, and reliable. He adored facts. Math. Science. Worthy human concepts.

  
But there is more to being human than the mastery of nature, and the conquest of the universe.

  
He does not wish to conquer.

Only to understand. 

(Understand what? The human heart? He doesn’t know. Might never know. But that was a part of the journey). 

The journey ends here, he knew.

Or thought he knew. 

Armin wakes up coughing, his lungs on fire, his head aching so fiercely he cannot conjure a single thought. 

He coughs and coughs and coughs, every breath painful and labored. 

When he’s done, he looks around, his eyes tearing, burning from the dry air and the heat. 

His house is still smoldering. 

He can see it in the far off distance, a black smudge, a sin left by human depravity on the Bible’s earth. 

Can see trees burning too. 

See the patch of land his grandfather’s death had given him up in flames. 

Sees wanton destruction, meaningless hatred fouling the air with its tempered dragon’s breath. 

He grimaces. 

He hadn’t wanted to see it.

He’d wanted to die so he didn’t have to. 

But he is alive.

And he…

He turns to the right, suddenly aware of someone’s eyes on him.

That Fireman. 

He’s staring at him. 

He’d been watching him cough silently, listlessly, his dull green eyes as empty as they’d been when he’d dismounted from his motorcycle to dismember Armin’s world. 

Armin, his throat too torn up to speak, merely stares back at him. 

Why had he dragged him out?

Had he burned his cellar books, his most vital treasures, the originals, which he’d hoped to preserve, to keep beside his corpse for another generation?

Armin feels despair alongside smoke in his lungs. 

So this was it?

They were gone?

DuBois, Durkheim, Morrison, de Beauvoir?

They had died in the fire, as he should’ve, when he could’ve saved them, if he hadn’t gotten scared, and run down into the cellar?

What a coward. 

What a pathetic failure. 

If only he’d been man enough to burn in his living room, with his life’s work, with his animals. 

Instead he’d run and lead the monster right to his children, let him gobble them up one by-

“You know the answer to my question,” the Fireman wheezes unexpectedly. 

Armin’s brilliant blue eyes dart quickly to him. 

The man can’t meet his eyes for some reason.

As soon as he looks at him, the man looks away.

  
But something’s eating at him.

Something vital. 

Armin, in spite of himself, is curious.

  
He didn’t think Firemen felt anything.

“She was dying. She was in pain. She was suffering. I didn’t want her to suffer anymore.”

  
Armin listens.

  
“I ended it for her. The suffering, I mean. Was it alright? Was it wrong to do that? Did she want that? Did my mother want to die?”

  
Armin closes his eyes.

  
Ah.

  
(The human heart, Armin, can you or anyone ever hope to possibly understand it?)

 

“Did...you...ask...her?”

  
“She couldn’t answer. But you can. Was it right?” the Fireman demands.

  
His eyes are smoking.

  
For a moment, Armin can see fire in his throat, the flames licking his teeth, roasting his gums, and scattering his words into ashes.

  
“Can people want to die? You did! Why did you want to die? How could a person want to die?” the Fireman yells, sounding suddenly panicked, shaken, as though he were a small child.

  
Armin stares.

  
He can’t help it.

  
Fire is repulsive.

  
Hypnotizing.

  
Morbidly intriguing.

  
“It’s the end of life. Life is all you know. Death is...death is failure. It’s wrong. Living is right. How could you...how could you…?”

  
“Throw it away?” Armin asks. “For nothing?”

  
“For nothing,” the Fireman says forcefully. “Your life, it’s...she wanted me to do it...she asked...I knew she did, but...but then now I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  
Suddenly the man’s hands are on his throat.

  
Armin chokes, frightened by the man’s hysteria, by his mania, by his sudden assault.

  
He’s too weak to even fight him, only weakly squeezing at the hands on his throat.

  
“If she wanted to live, she didn’t seem like it! She was so frightened! She hated the hospital! She told me to let her die! But they wouldn’t let her die! I thought it was what she wanted!” the man shouts.

  
He lets up on Armin’s throat.

  
Armin coughs again.

  
“You’re smart. You tell me. Please. Was it right? Was it wrong? You’ve read books. You know everything. You’ve eaten the fruit from the garden. Tell me, please.”

  
Armin, massaging his throat, looks passed him.

 

Far off, at the smoke curling into the air in lazy vulture-like circles.

  
Vultures over a dying animal (humankind, its vitality drained, its miraculous gleaming future nothing but a rotting carcass and bones picked clean by time).

  
“Life is...life is nothing...without...you’re not truly alive if you’re…” Armin coughs, trying to get his thoughts together. “It’s...not worth living...if you’ve lost what matters most to you.”

  
The Fireman, his weapon stripped off, his uniform in tatters, his face covered in soot, yet more clean and alive than it had been when Armin had first seen him, clutches his own throat, his eyes squinted in pain and confusion.  
“What mattered most?”

But Armin shakes his head.

  
“Part of being human is not knowing what that is. And trying to find it. ”

 

And he lets his head drop backwards.

  
He lets the world spin around him in dizzying spirals, lets his world die as his vision darkens.

  
“Did she want me to end her suffering? Did she want to live? What was it she lost?”

  
Who knows.

  
All Armin knows, but cannot tell the Fireman, as he’s exhausted, and he’s just lost what matters most to him, is that she wasn’t the only one who had lost something.

  
Everyone had, at some point.

  
They felt the loss, but clung to objects, to other people, to old, unchanging ideals to fill it, at least partially.

  
If she wanted to die, as he’d wanted to die, then it’s for the same reason.

* * *

  
He’s useless. He didn’t answer the question!

  
No, be quiet.

  
Eren, riding his motorcycle, an unconscious Armin slumped behind him, the remains of Eren’s jacket tying him to Eren’s waist, is thinking harder than he’s ever thought in his life.

  
What are you doing?

  
Shut up.

He doesn’t know.

  
He’s confused.

  
But elated.

  
As though he’s come to some great understanding.

  
But he doesn’t understand what it is, this shining new meaning.

  
This clarity.

  
All he said is that he doesn’t know! What use is a man who knows nothing and admits it?

He admits it.

  
And he’s willing to try.

  
Willing to test his knowledge.

  
To try and fail, in the hopes of one day succeeding, even if such a thing is impossible.

  
Even if Armin doesn’t know the answers to his questions, he will want to know.

He will try to know.

  
And what matters most…?

  
What is that, Eren wonders.

  
He’s never thought of it before.

  
Never thought about what….mattered.

  
Never prioritized any one thing over the other.

  
Armin shifts against his back.

  
Eren feels a warmth, not a heat, but a warmth growing in his belly.

  
A fire that does not destroy, but builds.

  
He changes directions.

  
He will not turn Armin in.

  
He has too much to ask him.

  
Too much to learn from him.

  
Too much to learn with him.

  
He might be a mad man, but Eren wants to feel this madness too, this all-consuming humanness, whatever it is.

  
Is this what living is?

  
Eren doesn’t know.

But maybe Armin does. Maybe his books knew.

  
That’s why he’d left the books in the cellar alone.

 

And he’d left the cellar door closed, buried under the rubble.

  
Perhaps he and Armin will go back. Perhaps not.

  
But someone will find them, someday.

Seeking the same answers.

  
And hopefully, if they cannot do it, find them. 


End file.
